I haven't participated in Weekly Geeks for some time, but this one really got my attention. "This past Monday, the American Library Association announced their awards. Some you've probably heard of: Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, etc. Some you might not be as familiar with: Geisel, Sibert, Batchelder, Odyssey, Schneider, etc." I am not an awards person. I love books and movies and don't give two cents about Newberrys or Oscars. What can I say?I was intrigued to see who won this time around though since I actually read some contemporary fiction this past year. Here are a few of the winners and my connection to them:
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi won the Printz Award, given to books displaying "excellence in literature for young adults". I have this one sitting on the TBR shelves.
Terry Pratchett won the Margaret A. Edwards' award which honors for making a lasting contribution to YAL. I read - and obsessively love - Good Omens which he co-authored with Neil Gaiman, and I have a few Discworld books sitting on the TBR shelves.
And that's it peeps. Those are the only three winners I have in the house. I have read will grayson, will grayson by David Levithan and John Green and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, both of which received honorary mentions, and I have to say that I am a bit surprised neither one actually won an award. Both were excellent novels. Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution, which I have somewhere, also received an honorable mention.
Back to my non-interest in awards though. My problem mainly stems from traditional reading habits. Prior to blogging, I primarily read classics; awards, on the other hand, are all about the contemporary. It was a very, very rare occurrence that I read a book before it had been out on the shelves for at least five years (typically more like 50 years). Obviously, this minimized my interest in awards. I definitely read more new(ish) releases this year than in any previous year in my life. The other part of my problem is that I believe reading is a very personal experience. What I like, others don't. What others like, I don't. And that is just fine. It's nice to see books getting credit for particular literary talent, but the true judge of a book is whether or not the reader likes it; and that is individual, fluid, and personal.
I do wonder though - what awards do you guys really follow? Are there any awards that you have found consistently put forward excellent novels?
There are a several awards I follow religiously, but I’m far more interested in the nominees (as a shopping list of potential reads) than I necessarily am in the winners. Picking winners seems so arbitrary, and I’m not sure you can honestly say that one book is so much better than all the rest that it deserves to be isolated.
ReplyDeleteThe awards I follow are the Lambda Literary Awards, Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, Rainbow Awards, ALA Stonewall Awards, James Tiptree Award, Gold Crown Literary Society Award, and the Independent Literary Awards.
I don't follow any awards at all. I've come to realize that I never consistently like all books in any award system, so I've learned to ignore them. :D
ReplyDeleteI don't really follow awards but I do have past lists and have read from them a bit--though I find that my reading tends to lean that way without even knowing those books were award winners. The books I've had the most luck with are Booker Prize Winners.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading Knife of Never Letting Go right now and have to admit I'm struggling a bit with it. Think it could have been 200 pages shorter. :-/
So glad to hear that Room won an award! I was unhappy when it didn't win the Booker. I also have been thinking about reading The Knife of Never Letting Go, and have been hearing that it's a book not to be missed! Very glad to see this post!
ReplyDeleteI don't really follow award winning books, though I love looking at the lists and thinking about reading them all, LOL. It's not uncommon for me to dislike an award winner or short listed book (ie. Great House) so I don't put all too much credence into it. I like what you say about reading being a very personal experience. It's true! Something about a book might hit that person in a way that another person can't relate to.
ReplyDeleteMe, too. I used to never read a book the year it was published. And considering how many books I have in the house to read, the tbr dare challenge (not that I'm officially signed up) and just books I want to read, I'm amazed I get any so-new books read at all. I'm curious about awards but don't really care that much about them. I'm more interested in the 1001 books to read before I die list. How a book is praised still after many years captures my attention. :)
ReplyDeleteI don't seek out award winners, per se. But if I'm going to try a new author and they've won a big award, I might start with that book.
ReplyDeleteAll because some poor sole wanted to return something and the clerk was having a bad day. I guess they don't like being called "geeks" to their face.
ReplyDelete